Stupidity, atrocious calumny, infamous wickedness!

Google Translate is my new favorite toy.

As I type I am sitting in Winterthur's rare book room and (carefully) flipping my way through La Mode Nouvelle, a French fashion and political periodical printed in 1832. I'm looking for early 1830s fashion plates in order to compare the styles against French paper dolls from 1822 for a paper that I have due on Friday (oh, graduate school!), but I keep on coming up against very impassioned-looking sentences written in italics and with multiple exclamation points that just cry out for translating.

My current favorite? "Gens de la revolution, avez-vous prodique aux pretres assez de menaces et d'outrages?" Which, according to Google Translate comes out to something like: "People of the Revolution, do you have enough priests to lavishes upon threats and insults?" Somehow I think something was lost in translation.

So, I ask you, people of the revolution: DO you have enough priests to lavishes upon threats and insults? Inquiring minds want to know.

All the president's men...

One of whom apparently wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institution.

I've been reading All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The definitive account of the Watergate break-in and the subsequent hunt for the truth that lead to President Nixon's resignation, it is amazing in it's breadth and detail. But strangely, despite the veritable laundry list of felonies and almost-crimes committed by members of the White House staff and approved by the freaking President of the United States of America, what gets to me the most is the fact that burning down the Brookings Institution was tossed around as a potential game plan by the Watergate conspirators.

This is pretty much how it went down: a member of Henry Kissinger's staff (who, incidentally, also had his phone wiretapped illegally by the White House... you know, no biggie) left the Secretary of State's office to join the Brookings Institution, a policy think-tank in DC. He was believed to have taken some classified documents with him when he left, and certain members of the White House wanted them back. Break-ins were a real popular method of political espionage and sabotage around those parts back then, but the White House needed a way to cover it up. I can just imagine how this goes: a whole bunch of whitebread, clean-cut government officials sitting around a White House office, smoking cigarettes and tossing out ideas. And then some bright soul (Chuck Colson, specifically!) says, "hey, I know, why don't we set it on fire?!"

Apparently his suggestion freaked some people out and they backed off from the plan entirely, but still. I mean, the White House was operating in such a way in which a trusted member of the team, someone who had a DIRECT line to the President, could suggest firebombing an American organization and no one would think twice about it. I am going to repeat this, so you can experience the full import of it: firebombing the Brookings Institution. FIREBOMBING. It's so absurd, and yet terrifyingly possible! I just... I am floored.

Colson went on to deny that he had suggested burning the Brookings Institution down as a way to cover up their break-in (in fact, he jokingly said that he'd actually been talking about setting the Washington Post on fire, because that's just a side-splitter right there) but many sources claimed that he was lying.

I know this shouldn't astonish me - after all, these men were committing crimes left and right. Still, there is something so brazen, so viciously open and brutally honest about planning to firebomb a building on American soil that really drives home the powerful can't-touch-me attitude that these men had. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines in last year's Frost/Nixon, where the now-resigned and bitter ex-President Nixon yells at reporter David Frost, "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal!" But really, what should I expect? As a source tells Woodward in All the President's Men, "the President is... well, a felon."

All of this is to say: if you haven't read All the President's Men, do it. And then call me, so we can get worked up about the subversion of the democratic process and the importance of checks and balances, law and order, and having a government that respects the laws that constrains it. Good times, y'all.

"For Milo, who knows the way."

The Onion AV Club does a feature called Q&A where the various writers answer a question posed by either a staff member or a reader. The most recent installment of Q&A, "Families and Art," had the writers listing the works of art and culture that their parents passed onto them, and what they're going to make sure to pass onto their children. I liked the discussion and want to try it here; so here is the list of stuff my family made sure I appreciated, and some of the stuff I'm going to make sure my kids are introduced to.

Thanks, Family, for these Things:

1. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. I just... it's so... the English language does not contain the words to accurately describe how much I love this book. I can't remember how old I was when I first read it, or even if my mom read it to me first, but I can remember my mom handing it to me and saying that it had been one of my dad's favorite books. It's just so amazing - Tock, Digitopolis, Dictionopolis, the princesses, and Milo, surly unhappy disaffected Milo who ends up saving the day in spite of himself.


2. Full Moon Fever, by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Part of my Sunday morning ritual growing up, I'd wake up to the sound of Tom Petty wailing about not backing down and the murmur of my mom's voice as she puttered around the kitchen. Later in the afternoon my best friend would come over and we'd put on the CD again, jumping off the sofa whenever Tom cried out "and I'm free, free fallin'!" No one broke any bones, surprisingly.

3. Mozart's Requiem. My grandmother used to play this for me. Not necessarily the happiest of music choices for a young girl, but amazing nonetheless.

4. Sound of Music. Another grandmother speciality - we'd watch it whenever I'd stay over at her house. My bedtime usually came and passed during the intermission (when you put in the second VHS, 'natch) and she'd forget to make me go to bed because she was caught up in the drama of Maria and Captain Von Trapp. And what about the teenage Nazi?!


5. The Never-Ending Story. I actually hated the book, but my brother bribed me into reading it, which taught me the importance of bargaining. And I later put those skills to good use with my grandmother and a copy of Gone with the Wind, so hey, good lesson.

6. Star Trek: The Next Generation. Thanks, Isaac, for preparing me for a life-time of geekery by getting me hooked on the deep space adventures of a bald man and his devoted crew. I had the biggest crush on Wesley Crusher EVER. I'm blushing just thinking about it.


Get Ready, Hypothetical Future Children, Here's What's Coming:

1. Illinois, by Sufjan Stevens. It's about America! And Illinois! And Lincoln! And he plays a million instruments! My future hypothetical children are going to be forced to listen to the entire Sufjan Stevens discography but Illinois will get an extra few rotations.


2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. I used to re-read this book once a year, until I lost my copy. I need to get a new one, but I'm putting it off because it won't be dog-eared in all the right places like my old copy. I'm very resistant to change.

3. Singin' in the Rain. I actually didn't see this classic musical until the end of high school, but now whenever I'm feeling blue I know that I can just pop the DVD in to my computer and instantly feel better. Debbie Reynolds is adorable, Gene Kelly is gorgeous (of course) but my favorite actor in the whole movie will always be Donald O'Connor. The faces he makes? Priceless.


4. The Ordinary Princess, by M.M. Kaye. A book about the seventh daughter of the King and Queen of a fantastical kingdom who, upon birth, is given the "gift" or ordinariness by her ornery fairy godmother. Probably the best book out there for an awkward, nerdy young girl (with the obvious exception of Catherine Called Birdy, another fabulous children's book starring a forthright heroine in an unlikely setting.)

5. All seven of the Harry Potter books. This is obvious, so I think no further explanation is needed.

6. Veronica Mars, Seasons 1 -3. This will obviously be introduced to my hypothetical future children once they are old enough to appreciate a) the perils of high school, and b) the beauty of detective noir. Veronica is just like Nancy Drew, if Nancy had to deal with dead best friends, roofies, and a Ned Nickerson who might have date-raped her or started a gang-war. Not to mention, of course, class warfare and a dizzying high school hierarchy.



What say you? Anything passed onto you that you're thankful for, or something that you're going to make sure your kids get? Share it with the class!

Be still my heart

That is indeed the President of the United States of America reading "Where the Wild Things Are." And look, the book isn't upside down! This is major progress, folks.

Image via Jezebel, who got it from Getty.

Austenbook

http://www.much-ado.net/austenbook/

Well, it is certainly shorter than any of her books, but I think it lacks a certain something. Also, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is not nearly so awesome when her lines are written entirely in status updates.

Twilight: Harry Potter vampire soap opera? I think not.

So, Twilight. For those of you who have been a) living under a rock for the past year and a half, b) busy with better things to do, or c) not a 13 year old girl, Twilight is the first in a series of novels about a teenage girl, Bella, and her vampire boyfriend, Edward. It has taken the middle school set by storm and publishing wonks and booksellers see in the series the second coming of Harry Potter.

I didn't plan on reading Twilight. At 22 I'm obviously beyond the target demographic of the book, and while Harry Potter transcended age barriers and is, without a doubt, one of my favorite book series of all time (and I can say this without even a blush of embarrassment, so I'm not sure what that says about my taste), teen vampire love just doesn't really do it for me. But then I started reading all these articles about the book, both pro and con: hooray that it was getting young people to read again, boo that it promoted this absurd vision of teenage love and supported a till-undeath-do-you-part attitude toward relationships that just wasn't healthy. But when I heard it compared to my beloved bespectacled boy wizard, I knew I had to read it, if only to refute those claims with personal experience.

But how to go about reading it? There was no way I was going to spend my precious greenbacks (made all the more so by my current internship position) on a teen vampire book, and to get it from a library I'd have to get in line behind hundreds of screaming pre-teens wearing too much eyeliner. When I stumbled ("stumbled") across an audiobook version of it online I downloaded it, thinking I'd listen to it on the plane ride to PA. I didn't actually get to it, though, so it sat taking up precious space on my harddrive, until this week.

I spend a large portion of my days sorting through very old documents, rehousing them in protective cases and assigning catalog numbers to them. It can be interesting, such as when the document in question is a letter from Teddy Roosevelt or an invitation to a wedding in 1885. Lately, though, I've been trudging my way through the administrative documents of Grey Towers from the 1960s through the 1980s. Nothing very old, nothing very interesting: just a lot of internal Forest Service memos and work order forms for reconstruction projects. After my third day of almost nodding off over a debate over what type of lumber to use for maintenance on the property (the conversation spread out over ten letters), I pulled out my iPod and, on a whim, scrolled over to the Twilight recording.

So, now that I am 2/3rds of the way through it, I have compiled some reactions. First off, OMG apparently most teenagers feel a lot more intensely than I ever did in high school. If the characters in Twilight are anything to go by, teenagers feel intense mood-swings very five minutes based on whether the love of their life has their collar popped or not. Also, in Twilight land, apparently EVERYONE is gorgeous. There are no ugly people, or even mediocre looking ones. Our heroine, of course, is self-deprecating: Bella's insecurity is so oft-mentioned and omnipresent that I began to feel bad about myself in reaction. She thinks she's "ordinary-looking," clumsy and unattractive, but EVERY guy in a five mile radius has a crush on her and Edward tells her on an almost hourly basis that she is the most enchanting creature he has ever encountered. And given that he is one hundred years old, he's encountered a lot of creatures.

And that is another thing: I don't care how attractive Edward is, (and author Stephanie Meyer loves to remind us that he is devastatingly, undeniably, intolerably attractive), he is just plain creepy. And its not the blood-sucking undead thing that gives me the willies: no, its his stalkerish attitude. He starts watching Bella sleep a week after he's met her. Barely a day into their actual relationship he tells her that he wouldn't want to live without her. Before they even kiss he's declaring that she's the only thing that will EVER matter to him. It is intense and weird and I kept on waiting for Bella to snap out of her love-struck haze and mace his ass.

Of course, that is expecting way too much of our little Bella. She falls instantly in love with Edward, and even though she knows he wants to drink her blood and that the relationship CANNOT end well, she insists that it doesn't matter. After all, she muses, if she can't be with Edward she'll die anyway. DIE OF A BROKEN HEART. It's like Stephanie Meyer took all the angst of the O.C. and the original 90210 combined and thought: "you know, this is good but what it needs is more melodrama."

I haven't finished reading (listening to) the book yet, but I predict that the werewolves (the Native Americans on the local reservation, obvi) will start to play a bigger role and Bella and Edward will continue to be as nauseatingly in love until the end. I've read that by the fourth book they are married and Bella is about to become another teen mother statistic as she gives birth to their human/vampire hybrid love child. Like a Prius, but with bloodsucking abilities.

And this is where even more criticism of the series emerges: in the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, the vampire fetus is actually killing the (still teenaged) Bella while she is pregnant, but she refuses to give up the baby. She becomes the perfect wife and mother, caring for the newborn child (apparently the murderous instincts are dealt with before birth) and catering to Stalker Edward's every need. Some critics see it as a politically conservative story, with Bella and Edward's timeless love and refusal to abort the killer teen pregnancy as a morality story with family values at the core. And, of course, the fact that one of the werewolves gives the vampire fetus a promise ring and swears to remain true to the child until they are old enough to marry is creepily moralistic.

I can't even get that far in my critical thinking, though, because something else catches my judgemental eye first: this book is very poorly written. I have a feeling that Meyer must have every adjective in the dictionary memorized because she cannot let a single noun go by without attaching at least three descriptive words to it. Edward doesn't just have eyes: they are "smoldering, passionate topaz orbs." Seriously. And Edward's vampire sister never walks or runs; instead, she "danced upon the air, sliding and gliding to the lunch table." I have been in a cafeteria. It is impossible to slide and glide to your seat, undead or not.

The clever broads over at Jezebel wrote a piece about this, but I think their point merits repeating. I'm not concerned by the idea of children's books with a conservative agenda: The Narnia series is all about Christian might and right and the entire Lord of the Rings series can be read as a white supremacist tract. That's fine, because the books are so well-written and constructed that they end up teaching kids to think critically and use their imaginations, giving them the ability to consider or reject the ideological message built into the books. I read a lot of Roald Dahl but I never once bought his anti-Semitic physical descriptions of evil-doers as accurate. My problem is that this series seems to be so poorly written that it doesn't promote critical thinking or even imagination, and it certainly won't elevate the quality of it's readership's writing. When I think about the 13-year-old girl who is currently devouring Breaking Dawn while she bites her black-painted nails to a quick in anxious sympathy with Bella and Edward's love that dare not speak its name, I'm less worried about her ideological development than I am about her writing skills. I'd hate for her to one day turn in a term paper describing Stalin's eyes as "burningly sharp obsidian orbs."

Of course, I can't stop listening to the book. It is addictive in it's craptitude. And I hate myself a little when I write this, but I'll probably shell out ten hard-earned dollars when the inevitable movie version of Twilight comes out in theaters this year. I'm not so worried about myself: after years of exposure I've developed a strong resistance to the crap that pop culture can shell out. But won't anyone think of the children? And if not the children, then at least of the poor belabored English teachers who will have to grade countless creative writing projects featuring bronze-haired Adonis vampire lovers for the next few years?

And finally, I have just this to add: Bitch, please. I know Harry Potter, and this ain't no Harry Potter.